We had a fun morning: Mr. W and I walked Allie down to the edge of our neighborhood where the bicyclists doing the Orange County Triathlon went by. These people had the presence of mind, panting and pedaling uphill, to say good morning and smile at our Allie Cat wearing a pink cat head cap with little pink pop-up ears. Well, she did look pretty darn cute. Allie got to watch the bikes zoom by and listen to another lady shouting encouragement while some guy played songs on the bagpipe to entertain the competitors at the top of the hill. It would be fun to go to the Lake and see the swimming segment of the tri, but they likely did that part already. It comes before the bike, right? Surely these people aren’t that drippy from sweat at 7am.

Allie did an older baby’s schedule yesterday: she woke up 7a, had a nap at 8:50a for about an hour and a half, had another nap at 12:50p for an hour and a half, and skipped the last nap, went to bed for the night at 6:30p. That’s what the sleep book would call ideal. 7am wakeup, nap at the right times of 9a and 1p. Last nap is optional at 4p. It wasn’t as simple as it sounds; we’d skipped the last nap because my parents had come over and we were out having all-you-can-eat sushi. The owner/sushi chef “encouraged” us to treat him to sake shots, and he may have taken a few too many. We waited too long for him to complete our order with uni, and didn’t get them. Turned out he thought he gave them to us, and that’s why we were waiting around. Anyhow, by the time we left it was 4:30p; Allie had missed the time window for the 3rd nap AND was late on the 4th feeding of the day, which bothered me because I’d planned on putting her down early for the night due to the missed nap but that’d put the 4th and bedtime feedings too close together. I ended up doing that anyhow; she ate at 5p and again at 6:15p. The 5p feeding was short, tho. I got a lot of crap from Mr. W and my parents for my pushing everyone along so I could get home do what I needed to do. “See, Allie’s fine, the only one stressed about this is YOU,” Mr. W kept saying. Yeah, well, Allie being fine is just luck and I didn’t want to push it any more than we were doing already.

Allie’s been doing other older-baby stuff, too. I put her to bed on her back as usual, and for 3 mornings in a row, we woke to see in the monitor that she was on her tummy. Then when we finished our morning stuff and went to her room to get her, she’d be on her back again. Mr. W claimed that she rolled consecutively from one end of the rug to the other, but I didn’t see it. Her aim is now lethal. You can’t carry her and not pay attention or things will get knocked to the ground or poured on herself. She picks up toys, turns them around to study different angles of them, gives them a test chew or two, and then would deliberately swing them to the edge of her high chair or carseat carrier and drop them. And when she’s nursing, she’s learned that biting me gets me to say, “No!” or pull her off or say, “Ow ow ow” or some sort of reaction. So when she’s done eating (she makes sure she’s done cuz she knows a bite means the end of the meal for her), sometimes she’ll turn slightly up to face me, and I see her eyes curl into little moons of mischief as she starts to smile. Uh-oh, here it comes. She makes eye contact, and bites down slowly, watching me. Sometimes if my reaction is strong (“NOOOO!” I’ve yelled before), she looks startled and concern laces her eyebrows as she looks at me. If I smile or talk to her, her features relax into a relieved smile. Sometimes I won’t talk to her. I’ll keep staring at her sternly. She keeps looking at me nervously, eyes wide, waiting for a sign that things are okay. And then she won’t bite me for awhile. Once this lasted almost 2 days. It’s not gonna be a fun time when the upper teeth start coming out.

Speaking of not a fun time, tomorrow is Allie’s 6-month appointment. I took the day off to give Jayne a long weekend. The appointment is at 11a, so all that means is that Allie needs to be up from her morning nap, changed and fed at 10a so we can be out the door at 10:30a. Timing should work. The problem is that the electricity company has a scheduled electricity outing for our area from 9a to 2:30p to work on some stuff. That’s a long time without babycams! That also means no air purifier/white noise running in Allie’s room during her naps that I won’t be able to monitor, AND it’s trash day so the beeping of the 3 separate trucks will be louder than normal. 🙁 I was hoping Mr. W would want to take the day off to go to the appointment with us, but he said he’s going to work. I’ll just keep reminding myself that I can do this; I did it for the first 4.5 months of Allie’s life. Note to self: park car outside in the morning so we don’t get trapped in the garage during the power outage and not be able to leave for Allie’s appointment.

Mr. W and the stepdaughter (who just got back in the wee hours of the night last nite from a 2.5 week West Coast choir tour for her university) just left to go pick up his son for a bikeride and lunch. I’m seeing this alone-time with Allie, who’s napping right now, as practice for tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll hear Allie cry without cameras, but it sucks to not reassure myself after noises and stuff that she’s still asleep by peeking on the cam. I won’t even have the computer for entertainment when she’s down. Oh, the stepdaughter just presented me with a beautiful handmade quilt she got from one of the families that hosted her West Coast tour, as a thank-you for my arranging and booking her Europe trip for her (she’s going to Germany and Spain in 3 days, lucky girl) and for Mother’s Day.